Around this time last year I stumbled across a website that changed my life. It was the homepage for the Public Interest Design Summer Program at the University of Texas at Austin. As I read the program description, I knew I had found what I had spent the last two years looking for:

This program will provide education and training for students who wish to pursue careers in public interest design - careers that will allow them to use their skills and expertise in design to address large complex problems and create positive impact in society.

The program is taking place again this summer with an added bonus, an epic five-day forum that will convene 20 of the most well respected and accomplished professionals in the public interest design world. This first-of-its-kind event, called the Design Futures Forum, will condense the entire summer program down into just one week, a sort of “crash course” in public interest design, intended for students who identify themselves as future leaders.

The Design Futures Forum is in many ways the culmination of my experience last summer, so I want to tell you the story of how I found my way to the program and the important lessons it taught me about pursuing a career in public interest design.

Before I discovered the program I was stuck. I had a strong intuitive sense that it was possible to forge a career in the emerging field of “social impact design” but I didn’t know how, and there were no road maps. The closer I got to graduation, the more I felt the pressure. I quickly began to realize that if I was serious about a career in social impact design, I was going to have to take a huge leap of faith, and that scared the shit out of me.

On top of the fact that I could only find a handful of firms practicing social impact design, I felt like I was ridiculously under-qualified to be hired by any of them. I had begun to get desperate. It was already March of my senior year and I didn’t have a single job prospect, so I did what so many other students without job offers do: started looking at graduate programs.

But the more I thought about it, the more I realized a graduate program was not the right course for me. I already knew what I wanted to do, I just didn’t know how to do it. Because of that, the leap of faith I knew I’d have to take was a huge risk, both financially and professionally. What I needed was the knowledge, skills and guidance that would make that leap of faith less risky. Not only did UT’s summer program promise to educate and train me in the practice of public interest design, but it was only eight weeks long, and very affordable.

I learned many valuable lessons that summer, made personal connections with some of the most well respected leaders in the public interest design field, and even got an internship at Public Architecture through the program. But there was one thing I learned from the program that was more important than all of that.

I went into the program with the goal of learning how I could pursue a career in public interest design. I knew it was possible because by then I had already found a number of firms doing it like MASS Design Group, Rebar, D-Rev and Emerging Terrain. I wanted to start my own firm, and I expected this program was going to teach me the model for creating a public interest design firm. The important lesson I learned was that there is no model.

Every firm, studio, individual and nonprofit forges their own path, not because they want to be unique, but because they have to in order to make it work. Public interest design is an inherently multifaceted and complex practice; it requires diverse sources of funding, hybrid organizational structures and as John Peterson (founder of Public Architecture) put it, “an ability to not only solve problems, but identify them.”

Every public interest design firm must build its own model based on its context, its skills, and its resources. That’s not to say we can’t learn from the models out there now. In fact, I think one of the best ways to create a new public interest design practice is by studying how others have done it and borrowing, remixing and adapting their strategies.

Though there isn't a set formula for starting a public interest design firm, I left the PID program with unique set of knowledge and skills in everything from community engagement methods to understanding hybrid funding models, and maybe most importantly, I made connections with leaders in the field who have since become mentors and helped me find my place in the professional world.

I will begin with a wish and work backward: I wish for a world transformed through play. What, you might ask, would such a world look like? This is the question that sits at the heart of Institute of Play, a nonprofit I run focused on empowering people to thrive in a connected world. Our work uses game design and play as levers for change in the design of learning systems, products, programs, and experiences. And while we have designed things from public schools to summer camps, it is our latest project that looks to most fully fulfill this wish.

PlayBrave is a massively multiplayer online social game about playing together to build a kinder, braver world. Developed in partnership with the Born This Way Foundation and Gigantic Mechanic, the game challenges players to take on missions emitted from a secret society working to create a more open and brave world. The society knows that no single act changes the world. But they also realize every act counts and impacts others. They know that to change the world they’ll need to generate thousands, if not millions of actions over the next several months. Can this secret society do this? Can they change the world through their creations? That’s the ultimate challenge of PlayBrave.

One core principle of play is the permission it offers to experiment—with ideas, materials, and ultimately with ways of being with other people. When we choose to play, we open ourselves up to the possibility of seeing and acting in the world and with others in new and sometimes unexpected ways. PlayBrave challenges players to enter a space of play by engaging in a PlayBrave action. These actions range from simple tasks (e.g. “record a video of someone reciting a poem about intolerance and bullying, and upload it to YouTube where everyone can hear it”), to more complex tasks that might require coordinating with other members of the player community (e.g. “find a work of art that promotes kindness and bravery and share it”). Each challenge contains within it the potential for acts of resistance, kindness, experimentation and, above all, change.

My classmates and I are in the Design for Social Innovation program because we identified problems in our communities, companies, or cultures and are keen to figure them out. But before talking about any solution or outcome, we’ve learned that you must first frame the problem—by thoughtfully examining the system it’s part of to understand where and how to get involved.

For me, this was a refreshing approach to design after spending several years in NYC healthcare advertising agencies where we rarely considered the social context of our work. We delivered a churn of logos using a straightforward process our clients loved, but it didn’t feel relevant to the world in which we all lived. If we’d been more conscious of the interconnected system of pharma, healthcare policy, and real communities, our design would have likely made a bigger impact and we would have certainly been more proud of it.

Learning to use systems thinking, a holistic approach to problem solving that emphasizes contextual understanding, has helped me with team management, project planning, creative work, and even relationships. And for wicked problems like healthcare that confront business, nature, and society, it’s proving to be imperative.

In 1973, social scientists Horst Rittel and Melvin Webber defined wicked problems as those incomprehensibly complex and messy issues we have trouble defining, let alone attempting to solve. Climate change has proven one of the most wicked, as have healthcare, corruption, and the prison system. Such problems are inherently systemic, with unavoidable social complications that require flexibility and patience.

Let’s use Mayor Bloomberg’s soda ban as an example. It’s an issue tied to obesity and diabetes, NYC’s urban plan, the beverage industry, and cultural norms. Where to even begin? “We have to invent boundaries for clarity and sanity,” advises systems thinking pioneer Donella Meadows. Sometimes a simple infographic like this one works to tell the story (it shows the history, culture, and science of sugar consumption, but doesn’t overextend into policy or planning, which might dilute its message). Designing visual maps and models helps us immediately find connections and describe relationships. I’ve always been a fan of writing outlines to frame an argument or plan a project; creating models now helps me see the big picture and my place within it.

In our classes last semester, we visualized the evolution of Wikipedia articles and the narratives of New Yorker articles by creating stakeholder maps instead of writing outlines. We designed infographics to show how Tom’s Shoes and Bolsa Familia, a Brazilian social welfare program, operate in social context. Using systems thinking to map a problem in context is now my go-to approach for framing project plans or brainstorming thesis ideas.

It’s worth trying on a seemingly intractable problem of your own. Start by mapping the systems your issue is connected to, which might mean your company, family relationships, social community, or physical neighborhood. See if any patterns or relationships are revealed when you tell the story visually, and perhaps even a cause of the problem will emerge. As Rittel and Webber said 40 years ago, formulating the problem by tracing it to its sources is the first step in solving a wicked problem.

Toward the end of the year, everything feels like a mad dash, so it's hard for me not to compare one mad dash to another. So often, institutional crises result in a rush to get out of the crisis and into stability rather than putting a real focus on solving problems deliberately. We can learn from that.

Here's an example.

For a few years, I held season tickets to University of Colorado football. I don't know how many games I saw them win, but it certainly wasn't many. (I knew this was coming, which is why I had bought tickets with a nice mountain view, in case the action on the field got too ugly to watch.) That's been a bit of a trend for them of late, and this year in particular was really ugly: They won one game and lost the rest, mostly by crazy margins like 69-14, 51-17, 50-6, 70-14... you get the idea.

So what happens? Well, they fired the coach, Jon Embree, who'd been around for two years. There's some debate over whether that decision was the right one, whether it was racist or whether it was just plain stupid. What's clear is this: It created a crisis. In fact, almost any leadership change in sports is what you might call a "weird, mandatory crisis," because the university is suddenly on the hunt for a new coach.

Watching the mad dash for a solution has reminded me of the mad dash we're watching play out on TV (and whiteboards) every morning: The ongoing rush to solve the fiscal cliff crisis. As The Guardian's Heidi Moore points out, there are real consequences to Congress not resolving the crisis currently facing the U.S. economy, as there would be real consequences to a football team not having a coach, his staff, his vision for the team. But as Citizens for Tax Justice wrote here on GOOD, it's at least as important to get it right as it is to get it done.

Here are Simon Kuper and Stefan Szymanski, authors of the wonderful book "Soccernomics," on what generally happens when a sports team fires its coach and begins the search for another:

The New Manager Is Hired in a Mad Rush

In a panel at the International Football Arena conference in Zurich in 2006, Johansson said that in "normal" business, "an average search process takes four to five months." In soccer, a club usually finds a coach within a couple of days of sacking his predecessor. "Hesitation is regarded as weak leadership," explained another panelist in Zurich....

It’s not till you’re older that you realize kids are repositories for half-truths. They’re told the most extraordinary things. You could be president some day. You could compete in the Olympics. Grown-ups dispense these fantasies with earnest hope, knowing that the chances of their child fulfilling such a goal are very slim.

“Designers can save the world,” was a common phrase I heard upon entering design school. It was the ultimate half-truth, one that resulted in class critiques filled with eco-inspired projects: billboards lined with solar panels, cell phones made of birdseed, wind-powered villages. Though the sentiment was admirable, these solutions were designed by students with no understanding of real-world economics and politics. Little did we know that to attach even one solar panel onto a billboard can take years of lobbying. That’s the problem with designing for a better planet—most solutions require too much time and result in adding more physical stuff to an already bursting planet.

In his book, By Design: Why There Are No Locks on the Bathroom Doors in the Hotel Louis XIV and Other Object Lessons, Ralph Caplan advises us not to underestimate the power of situation design, or “the concept of moving from the design of things to the design of the circumstance in which things are used.” He asserts, “The most elegant design solution of the fifties was not the molded plywood chair or the Olivetti Lettera 22 or the chapel at Ronchamp. It was the sit-in.” Finally, a definition of design that emphasizes the economy of time, an understanding of resource availability, and most importantly, using what’s at hand rather than producing more goods to solve a problem.

Had I been armed with Caplan’s definition of situation design, what would I have done differently? If given the chance at a do-over, how would I save the world as a design student? The answer came to me over a carton of orange juice at my neighborhood bodega. In the few seconds it took to dig through my change purse, the cashier had already placed the orange juice in a plastic bag, thrusting it toward me over the counter. As a small-town southerner who had not yet grown past her mild manners, I sheepishly took the plastic sack, despite the empty canvas tote hanging from my shoulder. Now that I’ve grown accustomed to fast-paced urban transactions, I approach the register and blurt out, “No bag please,” with all the practiced anxiety of a Woody Allen film. My shopping neurosis led me to contemplate the thousands of transactions that take place across the world.

That’s when I realized how design could really save the world. Rather than design and market another cute, reusable tote, I would create a campaign to redesign the shopping transaction, a project in which the only product is a question asked by the cashier: “Would you like a bag?” Though this seems like the most minuscule of project goals, giving buyers an option is the first step toward breaking a habit.

It's not like companies aren't trying—they occasionally print encouraging phrases on the bottom of each bag. "Be good to the environment," many plastic bags implore. "Reuse this bag as a garbage can liner." But in the past decade, as plastic bags have come under fire, it seems the only change at the cash register has been an additional rack containing 99-cent reusable tote bags. While we wait for cities, states, and countries to enact plastic bag bans that may take years, one thing is certain: a behavioral change is needed.

We're not alone in this. Earlier this year when reviewing the results of the Design for Change School Contest, an initiative that encourages children in India to target and address an environmental problem in their community, the vast majority of the entries pinpointed plastic bag pollution. Children photographed hundreds of plastic bags clogging drainage systems and waterways. Fortunately, the kids did something about it — they gathered recycled materials and stitched together reusable bags that were subsequently distributed to shoppers in surrounding towns.

So in a case such as this, can designers save the world, or will it continue to be a half-truth? I’m not sure. But the sooner we realize that the simple (and local) answer is sometimes the right answer, we’ll be closer to understanding the true capabilities of designers. Erecting wind turbines in the desert would be nice, but designing a system that encourages kids in the neighborhood to stop littering can result in immediate, meaningful change. Further, if we could mobilize our design schools to act as sentinels that deploy situation design to address problems within local communities, imagine what we could accomplish. It would go far beyond plastic bags.

For designers, it is important to look at the problems and resources at hand without getting lost in fantasies of global healing powers. It is this sort of humility that Caplan emphasizes: “...I have claimed that design solves problems. It often does. But when we call designers problem solvers, the connotations are very grand…It helps to remember that, to a person hungry for scrambled eggs, a short-order cook is a problem solver.”

Ask the average middle or high school student if they would rather do algebra or play "Dragon Age II", and the video game option is going to win. But, if an innovative schooling idea called Quest to Learn (Q2L), spreads to the mainstream, future students might not have to choose. Don't worry, Q2L students don't play commercial video games all day. Instead, the school's systems thinking-centered academic curriculum immerses students in a "game-like learning environment," while also teaching kids how to design their own video games.

The first Q2L school opened in New York City in 2009, and far from being drilled with test prep, the gamers "learn by 'taking on' the behaviors and practices of the people in real life knowledge domains." That means they become "biologist and historians and mathematicians instead of learning about biology or history or math." Students also acquire marketable real-world skills like website production, film making, and podcasting. Along the way, they solve real world problems, use and analyze data, and learn to communicate effectively.

Now the program's set to expand to the Windy City with Chicago Quest opening as a charter school in September. Interim Chicago Public Schools chief Terry Mazany told the Chicago Tribune that Q2L's approach is "the only way we're going to catch up with the rest of the world." He expects it to be "an innovation engine for the district." However, the tech-heavy campus doesn't come cheap. A $1.2 million investment from the MacArthur Foundation, the Gates Foundation and other philanthropies, ensures that the school has the resources it needs.

With states slashing education budgets, scaling up Q2L's gaming technology isn't exactly feasible. That said, their systems thinking approach to learning is something regular schools can adopt now. And who knows, 10 years in the future, all schools might morph into hubs of video game-based learning.

Could the ideas generated at TED catalyze education reform? That's the hope of the organizers of the TEDActive conference, a new venture from the folks who bring us brilliant "ideas worth spreading" year after year. Through TEDActive, the organization's encouraging people to step up and do something about the issues facing our world, and that includes education. To that end, the new TEDActive Education Project plans to "explore how children can make an impact on the education system."

The education reform space is clearly dominated by adults—parents, teachers, administrators, policy makers and politicians—so the hope is that the project can help bring student voices to the table and catalyze a true education revolution. TED is asking conference-goers, as well as trend and innovation company PSFK's expert network—the Purple List—to "explore, collaborate and act" on the issues and ideas raised with the goal of "delivering a set of micro-actions that anyone can do to move a project."

Both TED2011 and TEDActive kick off today in California. If you want to follow the exchange of education related ideas, follow the Twitter hashtag #TEDActiveEDU for real time updates.

Joshua D. Fischer is the editorial director at Yoxi, a competition where teams battle to create and communicate the best solutions to social issues.

Hello GOOD friends,

Today you have the power to vote on the future of fast food. Right now, at Yoxi.tv, 10 teams are facing the challenge: Reinvent Fast Food.

You can watch and vote on their videos today and today only. What kind of videos? Here's a sampling:

Ever seen a dude stuff his face in a grocery store while philosophizing on the limited options in fast food? Do you wonder what it would be like to replace fast food kings and clowns with moms? Ever watched a slice of pizza get annihilated in the style of the 1980s arcade game Asteroids? Or perhaps heard the angle on fast food from a tamale-selling immigrant mother of three?

All this and more is ready for you to see because Yoxi is a competition of social issues. In Round 1, 10 teams enter, only six survive. You decide.

Joshua D. Fischer is the editorial director at Yoxi, a competition where teams battle to create and communicate the best solutions to social issues.

You hear that rumbling? It could be your stomach. But, actually, it’s something more. It’s 10 teams stepping into a virtual squared circle for the battle royal of social issue competitions.

Over the course of the next few weeks at Yoxi.tv, 10 teams from across the country will create videos to answer the challenge: reinvent fast food. In three rounds, you can watch and vote for the best idea. With each round, some teams will be eliminated while others will survive and advance. In the end, one team with one idea will prevail. It’s up to you to decide.

Want to do more than watch and vote? Don’t we all? Yoxi (YO-see) is also a social game. As the competition unfolds, you play along. You have the power to build your influence so that the team and the idea you like wins.

What’s at stake? The winning team gets $5,000 and could earn up to $40,000 through community support and matching funds. It’s more than a prize; it’s start-up funding.

See, there’s more to this new idea than fun and games; there’s a genuine desire and attempt at changing the world. This is everybody’s chance to take on social issues in a playful way. It’s an experiment and Yoxi wants you to contribute.

GOOD has been an excellent content partner, helping set the stage. If you’re a fan of GOOD, you just might dig Yoxi.

Think you can solve a Rubik's Cube in one minute and fifty-five seconds? That's what a twelve year-old in New York City did at school, and she's not alone. Students as young as seven are learning how to solve the cube that quickly in just one day—and they're not just switching the stickers around either.

Nope, a crop of Rubik's Cube-solving baby geniuses hasn't been birthed in some secret government program. These young cube solvers attend one of the 1,600 schools and hundreds of afterschool programs participating in the You CAN Do The Rubik's Cube program.

Although savvy teachers and cube enthusiasts have long known that solving the puzzle enables students to develop tactile and spatial understanding of math concepts like area, perimeter, volume, angles, and algorithms, figuring out how to use them to teach students has long been a challenge.

YouTube is full of cube-solving tutorials—like Dan Brown's video with almost 17 million views—but that approach doesn't specifically connect to educational standards. It's also not feasible in cash-strapped schools that don't have funds to purchase the equipment needed to project an internet video in the classroom.

Enter the company that makes the 30 year-old cube, London-based Seven Towns. Three years ago they began working with teachers and educational consultants to create downloadable lesson plans that align with content standards and 21st century skills like critical thinking, problem solving, creativity, and innovation. Their site also provides teacher's instruction pages, homework sheets, and student answer keys. The best part? All the downloads are free.

In Minnesota, high school algebra teacher David McMayer told the Minneapolis Star Tribune he uses the Rubik's Cube, "to teach transformations and functional analysis." According to McMayer, when students are working with the cube, they, "have to look ahead at the three or four modifications you'll be doing next, so it gets complicated. It's kind of an 'Aha' moment for them."

Science and math educational organizations across the country are also jumping on board the Rubik's Cube phenomenon by hosting cube solving competitions. At the end of October, the USA Science and Engineering Festival, held on the National Mall in Washington, D.C., hosted two You CAN Do The Cube tournaments, one for grades K-8 and another for grades 9-12. The top prize for the teams that most quickly solved 25 cubes? A cool grand.

Cindy Caruso, the Afterschool and Summer Camp Coordinator for New York City's Parks and Recreation Department says that along with teaching math content and teamwork, solving the Rubik's Cube teaches kids life lessons. "It can be pretty frustrating when you're doing it and some of them could give up. Well, actually it's been the opposite; it's a boost to their self-confidence."

Joshua D. Fischer is the editorial director at Yoxi.tv, a competition where teams battle to create and communicate the best solutions to social issues.

Let me get something out of the way. I want something from you. Yoxi.tv is looking for inventive, imaginative, and impressive teams to enter our upcoming competition about food. I want you to click on this link—http://www.yoxi.tv/register-team—and sign up. We just extended our deadline to October 25, 2010 and entering is super-easy.

Now let me tell you why we want you.

We all want to change the world. But it seems so daunting. Where do you start? What do you do? Do you do something entirely selfless? Or is there a way to effect change and leave your mark? Show the world you care and you did something.

With all the smart, creative, and passionate people out there, don't you wonder why more people aren't doing things, creating things, tackling big issues with big ideas, and making things happen?

For Yoxi's part, we created a structure to do just that. Yoxi (YO-see) is a competition where teams battle to create and communicate the best solutions to social issues. You bring an idea and we provide support and funding opportunities so that you can make your idea a reality.

Like I said, our upcoming competition is about food. Are you a creative problem-solver, a social entrepreneur, a food activist? This is your chance to work alongside big-name industry experts and marketing professionals to turn your idea into action.

We want to drive positive social change in a bold, new way. Really. And we can't do it without you. Go to http://www.yoxi.tv/register-team and sign up now. Like GOOD, we know you give a damn. So let's make something happen.

"If our maps are wrong, our judgments will be wrong.” —Eamonn Kelly, author of Powerful Times: Rising to the Challenge of Our Uncertain World

design mind on GOOD is a series exploring the power of design by the editors of design mind magazine.

What’s wrong with health care? That's a big question with lots of answers: There are cost wars between insurance companies and drug manufacturers; malpractice suits and expensive technology causing doctors to raise rates; greedy and negligent providers; misaligned patient behaviors and expectations—the list goes on. I'm going to focus on the last item on that list: patient perspectives. I want you to gain insight into how you engage with the health-care system by providing you, the reader, with a design tool for capturing and mapping your own experience. It's time to stop thinking like a sick patient and more like a consumer.

The Problem Space

One of the misconceptions we have about health care is that when we access this system, we think we are engaging with institutions similar to governments or religions. We expect it to operate with common constitutions, principles, and value systems. But this is not how insurers, manufacturers, and some providers view the system. They see it as a marketplace or an industry in which patients are a factor in profit. As businesses, they have done little to convey that it is a consumer system that can offer unique benefits (and responsibilities) if you realize how it operates.

Many of us view health care as a right that should be democratically controlled and regulated by and for the people. Others see it as another free market system. No matter the economic structures of the system, all the actors involved define the quality, effectiveness, and sustainability of the system.

So to inform this system, we need to move from the mental model of “sick patient” to “consumer of health products and services.” In order to do that, we must understand our patient (consumer) responsibility of self-reporting. Dr. Ethan Basch, an oncologist who treats men with prostate cancer, suggest that “doctors, researchers, drug makers and regulators pay more attention to patients’ firsthand reports of their symptoms while they take medicines, because their information could help to guide treatment and research, and uncover safety problems.” Dr. Basch is currently working on a way for patients to become better at self-reporting by providing a vocabulary and protocol for self-reporting symptoms to the providers.

The idea here is that patients are more informed and are able to provide doctors and drug companies with useful self-reported data, making drugs safer and the system more efficient.

The Design Action

I want to build on this idea of self-reporting and take it one step further by providing you with a way to capture and map the experience of your health-care journey, focusing specifically on the (hopefully annual) trip to the doctor’s office. You can use the journey map as a tool to do so.

A consumer-journey map is a tool used by designer to understand the experience of consumers and users in the purchase and use of a product or service. It’s a liner map (with a start and end point) meant to capture the key moments in a particular experience. For instance, the journey someone takes while buying a car or a computer. What are their motivations? What do they need? What is being communicated to them? What was the purchase and use of the product like?

Instead of a designer making one about you, I want you to make your own.

Step 1: A few weeks before your appointment download and print out the two documents above. Keep them in a handy place (along with a pen) until the visit.

Step 2: On the day of your appointment take these documents with you. At the beginning of your appointment share the papers with your doctor. Explain to him/her how they made you feel and what you learned from it. Use this as a chance to get their perspective on your role as a consumer of health care.

Step 3: Send it back to us along with a note about the outcomes. We will do a follow up post in a few months showing some of your results. All results will be anonymous of course!

The goal of the journey maps is to help you see your patterns over time and prompt a better conversation with your provider and or insurer. The journey map helps to orchestrate the many fragmented touch points of our health care in one “aha“ moment. It can also provide a shared framework, that we can used as a society, for discussing the experience of being a health-care consumer.

I hope you decide to give it a try. When you are finished email a digital photo or scan of the document to Jason.severs@frogdesign.com.